An opportunity to comment on a life very full, with room for improvement, and little time to do it.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Broccoli Stew? Ew.

One of LBA's many books to read is Sandra Boynton's Hey Wake Up! wherein Broccoli Stew is offered to the baby bunny and the hippo's response is, "Ew." (Of course, when the hippo learns the stew is for the baby bunny, he utters, "Whew.") Cracks me up.

My friend Anna over on her blog (normally about stitching) has been trotting out some of her recipes that feature vegetables as she has been benefiting from a vegetable coop this summer. Here is her recipe for Broccoli Casserole. LBA does have a penchant for Mac and Cheese so perhaps this might be a way to get him to eat more vegetables.

Set the oven to 375. Boil the macaroni to just shy of cooked. It will soften when you bake it. Then boil or steam the broccoli. Using a blender, pulverize the broccoli. Some chunks of stem will remain, but you mostly want broccoli mush because you really don't like eating flowers, do you?

Melt the butter. Brown the flour in the butter, stirring frequently. Slowly whisk in the warm milk. When the sauce begins to thicken, stir in a handful of cheese at a time. Once all the cheese is melted, remove the sauce from the heat.

Butter a casserole dish. Add the broccoli and macaroni. Stir to combine. Slowly add the cheese sauce. You won't need it all. You want the mixture pretty wet, but not soaking. Save the extra cheese for baked potatoes. Mmmmm. Butter the bread. Cut into 1" squares. Sprinkle over the mac and cheese. You really want to do this because the bread will soak up oil from the cheese and it will be very very yummy. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes.

5 comments:

I did think that I was going to agree with the hippo, but the casserole actually sounds delicious. Having quite a few vegetarian friends this recipe could come in very handy, I'm sure they must be bored with me feeding them mushroom risotto by now.

Just to clarify, this is broccoli casserole married to macaroni and cheese. My mother actually does a broccoli casserole with just broccoli and cheese sauce, no mac. The topping for that one is butter and bread crumbs. You bake it a little longer. It's sort of a souffle with more staying power. In all senses...

I just had a discussion over the weekend about foods that make me say "Ew!"

As I have probably mentioned somewhere, whenever I visit the 'rents, my dad likes to tease me by threatening to make foods I hate for dinner. This time it was chicken livers and brussels sprouts: Barf and barf.

Then my mom and sister got into a semi-heated debate about how tasty or not tasty brussels sprouts are, which led into a discussion of canned spinach and its similarity to wet toilet paper vis-a-vis taste and texture. (Remember when they used to make colored TP? We used to have green to match the general decor of the bathroom. This prompted me to make the wet toilet paper comparison when I was, like, ten. My mom's response at the time was to ask me when was the last time I ate wet toilet paper. Oh, and to shut up and eat my dinner.)

Dad also joked that he was having steak and mushrooms for dinner on Sunday, but not until after I left. Hilarious ... Not!